Commonwealth Teachers Group (CTG) First Edition, March 2025
Exploitation of OTTS is rife Teachers, like any worker, should have the mobility to pursue the opportunities that are best for themselves and their families. Therefore, while it is important that efforts to develop more sustainable solutions to address teacher shortages do not compromise the rights of teachers to move country for work, much more needs to be done to tackle employer and recruiter exploitation of OTTs. OTTs regularly experience second-rate rights and terms and conditions. For example, Caribbean teachers typically arrive in the UK with full training and years of experience. Despite this, they are often paid as unqualified teachers, leading to a salary gap of around £10,000 compared to their UK-trained counterparts. In the absence of relocation funding, teachers incur significant debt from the expenses involved in relocating. Certificates of sponsorship tied to work visas keep OTTs tied to bad employers since finding a new sponsor can be very difficult, with teachers reporting lengthy waits – sometimes years – to obtain sponsorship for their UK teaching qualification. One of the most prolific offenders is the Harris Federation, England’s second largest academy chain, with 54 state-funded schools. In recent years Harris has increasingly recruited teachers from the Caribbean, particularly Jamacia, flying out its own staff to do interviews. Such is the extent of the unfair treatment of Caribbean and other overseas trained teachers in Harris schools - alongside an excessive and unhealthy workload, and unfair and punitive pay progression system - that NEU members are currently balloting for strike action. Teacher migration is not new but, is on the rise As Leighton Johnson, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, identifies the migration of teachers is “not a new phenomenon”, but there has been an “alarming increase” post-pandemic. He added that shortages in Jamaica mean there are now “subject disciplines that schools have had to stop teaching”. The Commonwealth has previously come together to identify sustainable solutions to this challenge. In 2004, Commonwealth Education Ministers adopted the Protocol for the Recruitment of Commonwealth Teachers, which aims to balance the rights of teachers to migrate internationally against the need to protect the integrity of national education systems and the human resource investments countries have made in teacher education 20 years later, with teacher migration on the rise again and shortages of qualified teachers at record levels, its vital that the Protocol now adapts and responds to prevent the exploitation of OTTS and protect the investments source countries have made in their education workforce.
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